REVIEW: The Show #1

The creators of The Show said the book is “The Truman Show on a shoe string budget with Hunter S. Thompson as the show runner.” I can tend to agree with that assessment. My own pitch is Oldboy meets Big Brother meets Portal except GLADOS is now some punkass with a mohawk. It’s also part Toys R Us commercial. Sounds crazy, right? Welcome to Jed McPherson’s The Show.

There’s a guy locked in a dank, dirty room. He doesn’t know why he’s there. He doesn’t know his purpose. He doesn’t know why he’s been kidnapped. He’s cut off from the world and the only human contact he has is some buxom blonde dressed in a naughty nurse outfit and a surgical mask who brings his dinner. I’ll call this guy Beard Dude because he looks like a tall version of Gimli.

Up in the control room, Mohawk Guy yells at all the monitors that are videoing Beard Dude. Beard Dude is boring. He’s not exactly captivating television. The thing is this show isn’t even meant for adults. It’s meant for kids. Beard Dude is a children’s television show complete with sponsors that sell great toys that kids will want to buy.

Our first issue has Beard Dude tries to deal with his sanity and a talking object that he is given (that may not actually be talking). Mohawk Guy and Sexy Nurse contemplate how to make their captive the best television show program ever. The issue ends with a plot point that looks to propel the plot WAY forward in issue #2. Which is cool.

This is truly The Truman Show for sadists. I’m sure there are programs out there like this right now that you can find if you log into the Dark Web. It’s awful and sickening, made all the more better that in this comic the Beard Dude show is a kids show. Classic, funny, and oh so wrong.

We aren’t given too much in the first issue. We are presented with the situation and the characters, be it captive or captors. The first issue is meant to hook you to the story. I hope the subsequent issues give us backstory of how this poor soul ended up in a locked room for the amusement of television watchers.

Artist Joseph Velasquez is able to give the book a very dingy look which is great for our poor Beard Dude. There is almost a Peter Chung-like quality to the artwork at time which I really love. This happens mostly with Mohawk Guy and Sexy Nurse, but I dig it.

Jed MacPherson has crafted such an intriguing story and I’m really interested to see where The Show goes. This is a four issue miniseries so we’ll be in and out of the story rather quickly. I love how the first issue of The Show reads and I’ll certainly be along for this entire ride.